I
"In this matter of the railway James Mottram has proved a false friend,
a very traitor to me!"
Charles Nagle's brown eyes shone with anger; he looked loweringly at his
companions, and they, a beautiful young woman and an old man dressed in
the sober garb of a Catholic ecclesiastic of that day, glanced at one
another apprehensively.
All England was then sharply divided into two camps, the one composed of
those who welcomed with enthusiasm the wonderful new invention which
obliterated space, the other of those who dreaded and abhorred the
coming of the railroads.
Charles Nagle got up and walked to the end of the terrace. He stared
down into the wooded combe, or ravine, below, and noted with sullen
anger the signs of stir and activity in the narrow strip of wood which
till a few weeks before had been so still, so entirely remote from
even the quiet human activities of 1835.
At last he turned round, pirouetting on his heel with a quick movement,
and his good looks impressed anew each of the two who sat there with
him. Eighty years ago beauty of line and colour were allowed to tell in
masculine apparel, and this young Dorset squire delighted in fine
clothes. Though November was far advanced it was a mild day, and Charles
Nagle wore a bright blue coat, cut, as was then the fashion, to show off
the points of his elegant figure--of his slender waist and his broad
shoulders; as for the elaborately frilled waistcoat, it terminated in an
India muslin stock, wound many times round his neck. He looked a foppish
Londoner rather than what he was--an honest country gentleman who had
not journeyed to the capital for some six years, and then only to see a
great physician.
"'Twas a most unneighbourly act on the part of James--he knows it well
enough, for we hardly see him now!" He addressed his words more
particularly to his wife, and he spoke more gently than before.
The old priest--his name was Dorriforth--looked uneasily from his host
to his hostess. He felt that both these young people, whom he had known
from childhood, and whom he loved well, had altered during the few weeks
which had gone by since he had last seen them. Rather--he mentally
corrected himself--it was the wife, Catherine, who was changed. Charles
Nagle was much the same; poor Charles would never be other, for he
belonged to the mysterious company of those who, physically sound, are
mentally infirm, and shunned by their more fortunate fellows.
But Charles Nagle's wife, the sweet young woman who for so long had been
content, nay glad, to share this pitiful exile, seemed now to have
escaped, if not in body then in mind, from the place where her sad,
monotonous duty lay.
She did not at once answer her husband; but she looked at him fixedly,
her hand smoothing nervously the skirt of her pretty gown.
Mrs. Nagle's dress also showed a care and research unusual in that of
the country lady of those days. This was partly no doubt owing to her
French blood--her grandparents had been _émigrés_--and to the fact that
Charles liked to see her in light colours. The gown she was now wearing
on this mild November day was a French flowered silk, the spoil of a
smuggler who pursued his profitable calling on the coast hard by. The
short, high bodice and puffed sleeves were draped with a scarf of
Buckinghamshire lace which left, as was the fashion of those days, the
wearer's lovely shoulders bare.
"James Mottram," she said at last, and with a heightened colour,
"believes in progress, Charles. It is the one thing concerning which you
and your friend will never agree."
"Friend?" he repeated moodily. "Friend! James Mottram has shown himself
no friend of ours. And then I had rights in this matter--am I not his
heir-at-law? I could prevent my cousin from touching a stone, or felling
a tree, at the Eype. But 'tis his indifference to my feelings that
angers me so. Why, I trusted the fellow as if he had been my brother!"
"And James Mottram," said the old priest authoritatively, "has always
felt the same to you, Charles. Never forget that! In all but name you
are brothers. Were you not brought up together? Had I not the schooling
of you both as lads?" He spoke with a good deal of feeling; he had
noticed--and the fact disturbed him--that Charles Nagle spoke in the
past tense when referring to his affection for the absent man.
"But surely, sir, you cannot approve that this iron monster should
invade our quiet neighbourhood?" exclaimed Charles impatiently.
Mrs. Nagle looked at the priest entreatingly. Did she by any chance
suppose that he would be able to modify her husband's violent feeling?
"If I am to say the truth, Charles," said Mr. Dorriforth mildly, "and
you would not have me conceal my sentiments, then I believe the time
will come when even you will be reconciled to this marvellous invention.
Those who surely know declare that, thanks to these railroads, our
beloved country will soon be all cultivated as is a garden. Nay, perhaps
others of our Faith, strangers, will settle here----"
"Strangers?" repeated Charles Nagle sombrely, "I wish no strangers here.
Even now there are too many strangers about." He looked round as if he
expected those strangers of whom the priest had spoken to appear
suddenly from behind the yew hedges which stretched away, enclosing
Catherine Nagle's charming garden, to the left of the plateau on which
stood the old manor-house.
"Nay, nay," he repeated, returning to his grievance, "never had I
expected to find James Mottram a traitor to his order. As for the folk
about here, they're bewitched! They believe that this puffing devil will
make them all rich! I could tell them different; but, as you know, there
are reasons why I should not."
The priest bent his head gravely. The Catholic gentry of those days were
not on comfortable terms with their neighbours. In spite of the fact
that legally they were now "emancipated," any malicious person could
still make life intolerable to them. The railway mania was at its
beginnings, and it would have been especially dangerous for Charles
Nagle to take, in an active sense, the unpopular side.
In other parts of England, far from this Dorset countryside, railroads
had brought with them a revival of trade. It was hoped that the same
result would follow here, and a long strip of James Mottram's estate had
been selected as being peculiarly suitable for the laying down of the
iron track which was to connect the nearest town with the sea.
Unfortunately the land in question consisted of a wood which formed the
boundary-line where Charles Nagle's property marched with that of his
kinsman and co-religionist, James Mottram; and Nagle had taken the
matter very ill indeed. He was now still suffering, in a physical
sense, from the effects of the violent fit of passion which the matter
had induced, and which even his wife, Catherine, had not been able to
allay....
As he started walking up and down with caged, impatient steps, she
watched him with an uneasy, anxious glance. He kept shaking his head
with a nervous movement, and he stared angrily across the ravine to the
opposite hill, where against the skyline the large mass of Eype Castle,
James Mottram's dwelling-place, stood four-square to the high winds
which swept up from the sea.
Suddenly he again strode over to the edge of the terrace: "I think I'll
go down and have a talk to those railroad fellows," he muttered
uncertainly.
Charles knew well that this was among the forbidden things--the things
he must not do; yet occasionally Catherine, who was, as the poor fellow
dimly realized, his mentor and guardian, as well as his outwardly
submissive wife, would allow him to do that which was forbidden.
But to-day such was not her humour. "Oh, no, Charles," she said
decidedly, "you cannot go down to the wood! You must stay here and talk
to Mr. Dorriforth."
"They were making hellish noises all last night; I had no rest at all,"
Nagle went on inconsequently. "They were running their puffing devil up
and down, 'The Bridport Wonder'--that's what they call it, reverend
sir," he turned to the priest.
Catherine again looked up at her husband, and their old friend saw that
she bit her lip as if checking herself in impatient speech. Was she
losing the sweetness of her temper, the evenness of disposition the
priest had ever admired in her, and even reverenced?
Mrs. Nagle knew that the steam-engine had been run over the line for the
first time the night before, for James Mottram and she had arranged that
the trial should take place then rather than in the daytime. She also
knew that Charles had slept through the long dark hours, those hours
during which she had lain wide awake by his side listening to the
strange new sounds made by the Bridport Wonder. Doubtless one of the
servants had spoken of the matter in his hearing.
She frowned, then felt ashamed. "Charles," she said gently, "would it
not be well for me to go down to the wood and discover when these
railroad men are going away? They say in the village that their work is
now done."
"Yes," he cried eagerly. "A good idea, love! And if they're going off
at once, you might order that a barrel of good ale be sent down to them.
I'm informed that that's what James has had done this very day. Now I've
no wish that James should appear more generous than I!"
Catherine Nagle smiled, the indulgent kindly smile which a woman bestows
on a loved child who suddenly betrays a touch of that vanity which is,
in a child, so pardonable.
She went into the house, and in a few moments returned with a pink scarf
wound about her soft dark hair--hair dressed high, turned back from her
forehead in the old pre-Revolution French mode, and not, as was then the
fashion, arranged in stiff curls.
The two men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank
out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard
planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a
quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a strong lock to it, was set in this
closely clipped hedge. It opened on a steep path which, after traversing
two fields, terminated in the beech-wood where now ran the iron track of
the new railroad.
Catherine Nagle unlocked the orchard gate, and went through on to the
field path. And then she slackened her steps.
For hours, nay, for days, she had been longing for solitude, and now,
for a brief space, solitude was hers. But, instead of bringing her
peace, this respite from the companionship of Charles and of Mr.
Dorriforth brought increased tumult and revolt.
She had ardently desired the visit of the old priest, but his presence
had bestowed, instead of solace, fret and discomfort. When he fixed on
her his mild, penetrating eyes, she felt as if he were dragging into the
light certain secret things which had been so far closely hidden within
her heart, and concerning which she had successfully dulled her once
sensitive conscience.
The waking hours of the last two days had each been veined with torment.
Her soul sickened as she thought of the morrow, St. Catherine's Day,
that is, her feast-day. The _émigrés_, Mrs. Nagle's own people, had in
exile jealousy kept up their own customs, and to Charles Nagle's wife
the twenty-fifth day of November had always been a day of days, what her
birthday is to a happy Englishwoman. Even Charles always remembered the
date, and in concert with his faithful man-servant, Collins, sent to
London each year for a pretty jewel. The housefolk, all of whom had
learnt to love their mistress, and who helped her loyally in her
difficult, sometimes perilous, task, also made of the feast a holiday.
But now, on this St. Catherine's Eve, Mrs. Nagle told herself that she
was at the end of her strength. And yet only a month ago--so she now
reminded herself piteously--all had been well with her; she had been
strangely, pathetically happy a month since; content with all the
conditions of her singular and unnatural life....
Suddenly she stopped walking. As if in answer to a word spoken by an
invisible companion she turned aside, and, stooping, picked a weed
growing by the path. She held it up for a moment to her cheek, and then
spoke aloud. "Were it not for James Mottram," she said slowly, and very
clearly, "I, too, should become mad."
Then she looked round in sudden fear. Catherine Nagle had never before
uttered, or permitted another to utter aloud in her presence, that awful
word. But she knew that their neighbours were not so scrupulous. One
cruel enemy, and, what was especially untoward, a close relation, Mrs.
Felwake, own sister to Charles Nagle's dead father, often uttered it.
This lady desired her son to reign at Edgecombe; it was she who in the
last few years had spread abroad the notion that Charles Nagle, in the
public interest, should be asylumed.
In his own house, and among his own tenants, the slander was angrily
denied. When Charles was stranger, more suspicious, moodier than usual,
those about him would tell one another that "the squire was ill to-day,"
or that "the master was ailing." That he had a mysterious illness was
admitted. Had not a famous London doctor persuaded Mr. Nagle that it
would be dangerous for him to ride, even to walk outside the boundary of
his small estate,--in brief, to run any risks which might affect his
heart? He had now got out of the way of wishing to go far afield;
contentedly he would pace up and down for hours on the long terrace
which overhung the wood--talking, talking, talking, with Catherine on
his arm.
But he was unselfish--sometimes. "Take a walk, dear heart, with James,"
he would say, and then Catherine Nagle and James Mottram would go out
and make their way to some lonely farmhouse or cottage where Mottram had
estate business. Yet during these expeditions they never forgot Charles,
so Catherine now reminded herself sorely,--nay, it was then that they
talked of him the most, discussing him kindly, tenderly, as they
went....
Catherine walked quickly on, her eyes on the ground. With a feeling of
oppressed pain she recalled the last time she and Mottram had been alone
together. Bound for a distant spot on the coast, they had gone on and on
for miles, almost up to the cliffs below which lay the sea. Ah, how
happy, how innocent she had felt that day!
Then they had come to a stile--Mottram had helped her up, helped her
down, and for a moment her hand had lain and fluttered in his hand....
During the long walk back, each had been very silent; and Catherine--she
could not answer for her companion--when she had seen Charles waiting
for her patiently, had felt a pained, shamed beat of the heart. As for
James Mottram, he had gone home at once, scarce waiting for good-nights.
That evening--Catherine remembered it now with a certain comfort--she
had been very kind to Charles; she was ever kind, but she had then been
kinder than usual, and he had responded by becoming suddenly clearer in
mind than she had known him to be for a long time. For some days he had
been the old Charles--tender, whimsical, gallant, the Charles with whom,
at a time when every girl is in love with love, she had alack! fallen in
love. Then once more the cloud had come down, shadowing a dreary waste
of days--dark days of oppression and of silence, alternating with sudden
bursts of unreasonable and unreasoning rage.
James Mottram had come, and come frequently, during that time of misery.
But his manner had changed. He had become restrained, as if watchful of
himself; he was no longer the free, the happy, the lively companion he
had used to be. Catherine scarcely saw him out of Charles's presence,
and when they were by chance alone they talked of Charles, only of
Charles and of his unhappy condition, and of what could be done to
better it.
And now James Mottram had given up coming to Edgecombe in the old
familiar way; or rather--and this galled Catherine shrewdly--he came
only sufficiently often not to rouse remark among their servants and
humble neighbours.
* * * * *
Catherine Nagle was on the edge of the wood, and looking about her she
saw with surprise that the railway men she had come down to see had
finished work for the day. There were signs of their immediate
occupation, a fire was still smouldering, and the door of one of the
shanties they occupied was open. But complete stillness reigned in this
kingdom of high trees. To the right and left, as far as she could see,
stretched the twin lines of rude iron rails laid down along what had
been a cart-track, as well as a short cut between Edgecombe Manor and
Eype Castle. A dun drift, to-day's harvest of dead leaves, had settled
on the rails; even now it was difficult to follow their course.
As she stood there, about to turn and retrace her steps, Catherine
suddenly saw James Mottram advancing quickly towards her, and the
mingled revolt and sadness which had so wholly possessed her gave way to
a sudden, overwhelming feeling of security and joy.
She moved from behind the little hut near which she had been standing,
and a moment later they stood face to face.
James Mottram was as unlike Charles Nagle as two men of the same age, of
the same breed, and of the same breeding could well be. He was shorter,
and of sturdier build, than his cousin; and he was plain, whereas
Charles Nagle was strikingly handsome. Also his face was tanned by
constant exposure to sun, salt-wind, and rain; his hair was cut short,
his face shaven.
The very clothes James Mottram wore were in almost ludicrous contrast to
those which Charles Nagle affected, for Mottram's were always of
serviceable homespun. But for the fact that they and he were
scrupulously clean, the man now walking by Catherine Nagle's side might
have been a prosperous farmer or bailiff instead of the owner of such
large property in those parts as made him, in spite of his unpopular
faith, lord of the little world about him.
On his plain face and strong, sturdy figure Catherine's beautiful eyes
dwelt with unconscious relief. She was so weary of Charles's absorption
in his apparel, and of his interest in the hundred and one fal-lals
which then delighted the cosmopolitan men of fashion.
A simple, almost childish gladness filled her heart. Conscience, but
just now so insistent and disturbing a familiar, vanished for a space,
nay more, assumed the garb of a meddling busybody who seeks to discover
harm where no harm is.
Was not James Mottram Charles's friend, almost, as the old priest had
said, Charles's brother? Had she not herself deliberately chosen Charles
in place of James when both young men had been in ardent pursuit of
her--James's pursuit almost wordless, Charles's conducted with all the
eloquence of the poet he had then set out to be?
Mottram, seeing her in the wood, uttered a word of surprise. She
explained her presence there. Their hands scarce touched in greeting,
and then they started walking side by side up the field path.
Mottram carried a stout ash stick. Had the priest been there he would
perchance have noticed that the man's hand twitched and moved restlessly
as he swung his stick about; but Catherine only became aware that her
companion was preoccupied and uneasy after they had gone some way.
When, however, the fact of his unease seemed forced upon her notice, she
felt suddenly angered. There was a quality in Mrs. Nagle that made her
ever ready to rise to meet and conquer circumstance. She told herself,
with heightened colour, that James Mottram should and must return to his
old ways--to his old familiar footing with her. Anything else would be,
nay was, intolerable.
"James,"--she turned to him frankly--"why have you not come over to see
us lately as often as you did? Charles misses you sadly, and so do I.
Prepare to find him in a bad mood to-day. But just now he distressed
Mr. Dorriforth by his unreasonableness touching the railroad." She
smiled and went on lightly, "He said that you were a false friend to
him--a traitor!"
And then Catherine Nagle stopped and caught her breath. God! Why had she
said that? But Mottram had evidently not caught the sinister word, and
Catherine in haste drove back conscience into the lair whence conscience
had leapt so suddenly to her side.
"Maybe I ought, in this matter of the railroad," he said musingly, "to
have humoured Charles. I am now sorry I did not do so. After all,
Charles may be right--and all we others wrong. The railroad may not
bring us lasting good!"
Catherine looked at him surprised. James Mottram had always been so sure
of himself in this matter; but now there was dejection, weariness in his
voice; and he was walking quickly, more quickly up the steep incline
than Mrs. Nagle found agreeable. But she also hastened her steps,
telling herself, with wondering pain, that he was evidently in no mood
for her company.
"Mr. Dorriforth has already been here two days," she observed
irrelevantly.
"Aye, I know that. It was to see him I came to-day; and I will ask you
to spare him to me for two or three hours. Indeed, I propose that he
should walk back with me to the Eype. I wish him to witness my new will.
And then I may as well go to confession, for it is well to be shriven
before a journey, though for my part I feel ever safer on sea than
land!"
Mottram looked straight before him as he spoke.
"A journey?" Catherine repeated the words in a low, questioning tone.
There had come across her heart a feeling of such anguish that it was as
though her body instead of her soul were being wrenched asunder. In her
extremity she called on pride--and pride, ever woman's most loyal
friend, flew to her aid.
"Yes," he repeated, still staring straight in front of him, "I leave
to-morrow for Plymouth. I have had letters from my agent in Jamaica
which make it desirable that I should return there without delay." He
dug his stick into the soft earth as he spoke.
James Mottram was absorbed in himself, in his own desire to carry
himself well in his fierce determination to avoid betraying what he
believed to be his secret. But Catherine Nagle knew nothing of this.
She almost thought him indifferent.
They had come to a steep part of the incline, and Catherine suddenly
quickened her steps and passed him, so making it impossible that he
could see her face. She tried to speak, but the commonplace words she
desired to say were strangled, at birth, in her throat.
"Charles will not mind; he will not miss me as he would have missed me
before this unhappy business of the railroad came between us," Mottram
said lamely.
She still made no answer; instead she shook her head with an impatient
gesture. Her silence made him sorry. After all, he had been a good
friend to Catherine Nagle--so much he could tell himself without shame.
He stepped aside on to the grass, and striding forward turned round and
faced her.
The tears were rolling down her cheeks; but she threw back her head and
met his gaze with a cold, almost a defiant look. "You startled me
greatly," she said breathlessly, "and took me so by surprise, James! I
am grieved to think how Charles--nay, how we shall both--miss you. It is
of Charles I think, James; it is for Charles I weep----"
As she uttered the lying words, she still looked proudly into his face
as if daring him to doubt her. "But I shall never forget--I shall ever
think with gratitude of your great goodness to my poor Charles. Two
years out of your life--that's what it's been, James. Too much--too much
by far!" She had regained control over her quivering heart, and it was
with a wan smile that she added, "But we shall miss you, dear, kind
friend."
Her smile stung him. "Catherine," he said sternly, "I go because I
must--because I dare not stay. You are a woman and a saint, I a man and
a sinner. I've been a fool and worse than a fool. You say that Charles
to-day called me false friend, traitor! Catherine--Charles spoke more
truly than he knew."
His burning eyes held her fascinated. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
She was thirstily absorbing the words as they fell now slowly, now
quickly, from his lips.
But what was this he was saying? "Catherine, do you wish me to go on?"
Oh, cruel! Cruel to put this further weight on her conscience! But she
made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent--and again he spoke.
"Years ago I thought I loved you. I went away, as you know well, because
of that love. You had chosen Charles--Charles in many ways the better
fellow of the two. I went away thinking myself sick with love of you,
but it was false--only my pride had been hurt. I did not love you as I
loved myself. And when I got clear away, in a new place, among new
people"--he hesitated and reddened darkly--"I forgot you! I vow that
when I came back I was cured--cured if ever a man was! It was of
Charles, not of you, Catherine, that I thought on my way home. To me
Charles and you had become one. I swear it!" He repeated: "To me you and
Charles were one."
He waited a long moment, and then, more slowly, he went on, as if
pleading with himself--with her: "You know what I found here in place of
what I had left? I found Charles a----"
Catherine Nagle shrank back. She put up her right hand to ward off the
word, and Mottram, seizing her hand, held it in his with a convulsive
clasp. "'Twas not the old feeling that came back to me--that I again
swear, Catherine. 'Twas something different--something infinitely
stronger--something that at first I believed to be all noble----"
He stopped speaking, and Catherine Nagle uttered one word--a curious
word. "When?" she asked, and more urgently again she whispered, "When?"
"Long before I knew!" he said hoarsely. "At first I called the passion
that possessed me by the false name of 'friendship.' But that poor
hypocrisy soon left me! A month ago, Catherine, I found myself
wishing--I'll say this for myself, it was for the first time--that
Charles was dead. And then I knew for sure what I had already long
suspected--that the time had come for me to go----"
He dropped her hand, and stood before her, abased in his own eyes, but
one who, if a criminal, had had the strength to be his own judge and
pass heavy sentence on himself.
"And now, Catherine--now that you understand why I go, you will bid me
God-speed. Nay, more"--he looked at her, and smiled wryly--"if you are
kind, as I know you to be kind, you will pray for me, for I go from you
a melancholy, as well as a foolish man."
She smiled a strange little wavering smile, and Mottram was deeply moved
by the gentleness with which Catherine Nagle had listened to his story.
He had been prepared for an averted glance, for words of cold
rebuke--such words as his own long-dead mother would surely have
uttered to a man who had come to her with such a tale.
* * * * *
They walked on for a while, and Catherine again broke the silence by a
question which disturbed her companion. "Then your agent's letter was
not really urgent, James?"
"The letters of an honest agent always call for the owner," he muttered
evasively.
They reached the orchard gate. Catherine held the key in her hand, but
she did not place it in the lock--instead she paused awhile. "Then there
is no special urgency?" she repeated. "And James--forgive me for asking
it--are you, indeed, leaving England because of this--this matter of
which you have just told me?"
He bent his head in answer.
Then she said deliberately: "Your conscience, James, is too scrupulous.
I do not think that there is any reason why you should not stay. When
Charles and I were in Italy," she went on in a toneless, monotonous
voice, "I met some of those young noblemen who in times of pestilence go
disguised to nurse the sick and bury the dead. It is that work of
charity, dear friend, which you have been performing in our unhappy
house. You have been nursing the sick--nay, more, you have been
tending"--she waited, then in a low voice she added--"the dead--the dead
that are yet alive."
Mottram's soul leapt into his eyes. "Then you bid me stay?" he asked.
"For the present," she answered, "I beg you to stay. But only so if it
is indeed true that your presence is not really required in Jamaica."
"I swear, Catherine, that all goes sufficiently well there." Again he
fixed his honest, ardent eyes on her face.
And now James Mottram was filled with a great exultation of spirit. He
felt that Catherine's soul, incapable of even the thought of evil,
shamed and made unreal the temptation which had seemed till just now one
which could only be resisted by flight. Catherine was right; he had been
over scrupulous.
There was proof of it in the blessed fact that even now, already, the
poison which had seemed to possess him, that terrible longing for
another man's wife, had left him, vanishing in that same wife's pure
presence. It was when he was alone--alone in his great house on the
hill, that the devil entered into him, whispering that it was an awful
thing such a woman as was Catherine, sensitive, intelligent, and in her
beauty so appealing, should be tied to such a being as was Charles
Nagle--poor Charles, whom every one, excepting his wife and one loyal
kinsman, called mad. And yet now it was for this very Charles that
Catherine asked him to stay, for the sake of that unhappy, distraught
man to whom he, James Mottram, recognized the duty of a brother.
"We will both forget what you have just told me," she said gently, and
he bowed his head in reverence.
They were now on the last step of the stone stairway leading to the
terrace.
Mrs. Nagle turned to her companion; he saw that her eyes were very
bright, and that the rose-red colour in her cheeks had deepened as if
she had been standing before a great fire.
As they came within sight of Charles Nagle and of the old priest,
Catherine put out her hand. She touched Mottram on the arm--it was a
fleeting touch, but it brought them both, with beating hearts, to a
stand. "James," she said, and then she stopped for a moment--a moment
that seemed to contain æons of mingled rapture and pain--"one word about
Mr. Dorriforth." The commonplace words dropped them back to earth. "Did
you wish him to stay with you till to-morrow? That will scarcely be
possible, for to-morrow is St. Catherine's Day."
"Why, no," he said quickly. "I will not take him home with me to-night.
All my plans are now changed. My will can wait"--he smiled at her--"and
so can my confession."
"No, no!" she cried almost violently. "Your confession must not wait,
James----"
"Aye, but it must," he said, and again he smiled. "I am in no mood for
confession, Catherine." He added in a lower tone, "you've purged me of
my sin, my dear--I feel already shriven."
Shame of a very poignant quality suddenly seared Catherine Nagle's soul.
"Go on, you," she said breathlessly, though to his ears she seemed to
speak in her usual controlled and quiet tones, "I have some orders to
give in the house. Join Charles and Mr. Dorriforth. I will come out
presently."
James Mottram obeyed her. He walked quickly forward. "Good news,
Charles," he cried. "These railway men whose presence so offends you go
for good to-morrow! Reverend sir, accept my hearty greeting."
* * * * *
Catherine Nagle turned to the right and went into the house. She
hastened through the rooms in which, year in and year out, she spent
her life, with Charles as her perpetual, her insistent companion. She
now longed for a time of recollection and secret communion, and so she
instinctively made for the one place where no one, not even Charles,
would come and disturb her.
Walking across the square hall, she ran up the broad staircase leading
to the gallery, out of which opened the doors of her bedroom and of her
husband's dressing-room. But she went swiftly past these two closed
doors, and made her way along a short passage which terminated abruptly
with a faded red baize door giving access to the chapel.
Long, low-ceilinged and windowless, the chapel of Edgecombe Manor had
remained unaltered since the time when there were heavy penalties
attached both to the celebration of the sacred rites and to the hearing
of Mass. The chapel depended for what fresh air it had on a narrow door
opening straight on to ladder-like stairs leading down directly and out
on to the terrace below. It was by this way that the small and scattered
congregation gained access to the chapel when the presence of a priest
permitted of Mass being celebrated there.
Catherine went up close to the altar rails, and sat down on the
arm-chair placed there for her sole use. She felt that now, when about
to wrestle with her soul, she could not kneel and pray. Since she had
been last in the chapel, acting sacristan that same morning, life had
taken a great stride forward, dragging her along in its triumphant wake,
a cruel and yet a magnificent conqueror.
Hiding her face in her hands, she lived again each agonized and
exquisite moment she had lived through as there had fallen on her ears
the words of James Mottram's shamed confession. Once more her heart was
moved to an exultant sense of happiness that he should have said these
things to her--of happiness and shrinking shame....
But soon other thoughts, other and sterner memories were thrust upon
her. She told herself the bitter truth. Not only had she led James
Mottram into temptation, but she had put all her woman's wit to the task
of keeping him there. It was her woman's wit--but Catherine Nagle called
it by a harsher name--which had enabled her to make that perilous rock
on which she and James Mottram now stood heart to heart together,
appear, to him at least, a spot of sanctity and safety. It was she, not
the man who had gazed at her with so ardent a belief in her purity and
honour, who was playing traitor--and traitor to one at once confiding
and defenceless....
Then, strangely, this evocation of Charles brought her burdened
conscience relief. Catherine found sudden comfort in remembering her
care, her tenderness for Charles. She reminded herself fiercely that
never had she allowed anything to interfere with her wifely duty. Never?
Alas! she remembered that there had come a day, at a time when James
Mottram's sudden defection had filled her heart with pain, when she had
been unkind to Charles. She recalled his look of bewildered surprise,
and how he, poor fellow, had tried to sulk--only a few hours later to
come to her, as might have done a repentant child, with the words, "Have
I offended you, dear love?" And she who now avoided his caresses had
kissed him of her own accord with tears, and cried, "No, no, Charles,
you never offend me--you are always good to me!"
There had been a moment to-day, just before she had taunted James
Mottram with being over-scrupulous, when she had told herself that she
could be loyal to both of these men she loved and who loved her, giving
to each a different part of her heart.
But that bargain with conscience had never been struck; while
considering it she had found herself longing for some convulsion of the
earth which should throw her and Mottram in each other's arms.
James Mottram traitor? That was what she was about to make him be.
Catherine forced herself to face the remorse, the horror, the loathing
of himself which would ensue.
It was for Mottram's sake, far more than in response to the command laid
on her by her own soul, that Catherine Nagle finally determined on the
act of renunciation which she knew was being immediately required of
her.
* * * * *
When Mrs. Nagle came out on the terrace the three men rose
ceremoniously. She glanced at Charles, even now her first thought and
her first care. His handsome face was overcast with the look of gloomy
preoccupation which she had learnt to fear, though she knew that in
truth it signified but little. At James Mottram she did not look, for
she wished to husband her strength for what she was about to do.
Making a sign to the others to sit down, she herself remained standing
behind Charles's chair. It was from there that she at last spoke,
instinctively addressing her words to the old priest.
"I wonder," she said, "if James has told you of his approaching
departure? He has heard from his agent in Jamaica that his presence is
urgently required there."
Charles Nagle looked up eagerly. "This is news indeed!" he exclaimed.
"Lucky fellow! Why, you'll escape all the trouble that you've put on us
with regard to that puffing devil!" He spoke more cordially than he had
done for a long time to his cousin.
Mr. Dorriforth glanced for a moment up at Catherine's face. Then quickly
he averted his eyes.
James Mottram rose to his feet. His limbs seemed to have aged. He gave
Catherine a long, probing look.
"Forgive me," he said deliberately. "You mistook my meaning. The matter
is not as urgent, Catherine, as you thought." He turned to Charles, "I
will not desert my friends--at any rate not for the present. I'll face
the puffing devil with those to whom I have helped to acquaint him!"
But Mrs. Nagle and the priest both knew that the brave words were a vain
boast. Charles alone was deceived; and he showed no pleasure in the
thought that the man who had been to him so kind and so patient a
comrade and so trusty a friend was after all not leaving England
immediately.
"I must be going back to the Eype now." Mottram spoke heavily; again he
looked at Mrs. Nagle with a strangely probing, pleading look. "But I'll
come over to-morrow morning--to Mass. I've not forgotten that to-morrow
is St. Catherine's Day--that this is St. Catherine's Eve."
Charles seemed to wake out of a deep abstraction. "Yes, yes," he said
heartily. "To-morrow is the great day! And then, after we've had
breakfast I shall be able to consult you, James, about a very important
matter, that new well they're plaguing me to sink in the village."
For the moment the cloud had again lifted; Nagle looked at his cousin
with all his old confidence and affection, and in response James
Mottram's face worked with sudden emotion.
"I'll be quite at your service, Charles," he said, "quite at your
service!"
Catherine stood by. "I will let you out by the orchard gate," she said.
"No need for you to go round by the road."
They walked, silently, side by side, along the terrace and down the
stone steps. When in the leafless orchard, and close to where they were
to part, he spoke:
"You bid me go--at once?" Mottram asked the question in a low, even
tone; but he did not look at Catherine, instead his eyes seemed to be
following the movements of the stick he was digging into the ground at
their feet.
"I think, James, that would be best." Even to herself the words Mrs.
Nagle uttered sounded very cold.
"Best for me?" he asked. Then he looked up, and with sudden passion,
"Catherine!" he cried. "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the
wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong
Charles--I swear it solemnly. Catherine!--do not bid me leave you.
Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to
become beseeching and imperious.
Catherine Nagle suddenly threw out her hands with a piteous gesture.
"Ah! James," she said, "I cannot trust my own----" And as she thus made
surrender of her two most cherished possessions, her pride and her
womanly reticence, Mottram's face--the plain-featured face so
exquisitely dear to her--became transfigured. He said no word, he made
no step forward, and yet Catherine felt as if the whole of his being was
calling her, drawing her to him....
Suddenly there rang through the still air a discordant cry: "Catherine!
Catherine!"
Mrs. Nagle sighed, a long convulsive sigh. It was as though a deep pit
had opened between herself and her companion. "That was Charles," she
whispered, "poor Charles calling me. I must not keep him waiting."
"God forgive me," Mottram said huskily, "and bless you, Catherine, for
all your goodness to me." He took her hand in farewell, and she felt the
firm, kind grasp to be that of the kinsman and friend, not that of the
lover.
Then came over her a sense of measureless and most woeful loss. She
realized for the first time all that his going away would mean to
her--of all that it would leave her bereft. He had been the one human
being to whom she had been able to bring herself to speak freely.
Charles had been their common charge, the link as well as the barrier
between them.
"You'll come to-morrow morning?" she said, and she tried to withdraw her
hand from his. His impersonal touch hurt her.
"I'll come to-morrow, and rather early, Catherine. Then I'll be able to
confess before Mass." He was speaking in his usual voice, but he still
held her hand, and she felt his grip on it tightening, bringing welcome
hurt.
"And you'll leave----?"
"For Plymouth to-morrow afternoon," he said briefly. He dropped her
hand, which now felt numbed and maimed, and passed through the gate
without looking back.
She stood a moment watching him as he strode down the field path. It had
suddenly become, from day, night,--high time for Charles to be indoors.
Forgetting to lock the gate, she turned and retraced her steps through
the orchard, and so made her way up to where her husband and the old
priest were standing awaiting her.
As she approached them, she became aware that something going on in the
valley below was absorbing their close attention. She felt glad that
this was so.
"There it is!" cried Charles Nagle angrily. "I told you that they'd
begin their damned practice again to-night!"
Slowly through the stretch of open country which lay spread to their
right, the Bridport Wonder went puffing its way. Lanterns had been hung
in front of the engine, and as it crawled sinuously along it looked like
some huge monster with myriad eyes. As it entered the wood below, the
dark barrel-like body of the engine seemed to give a bound, a lurch
forward, and the men that manned it laughed out suddenly and loudly. The
sound of their uncouth mirth floated upwards through the twilight.
"James's ale has made them merry!" exclaimed Charles, wagging his head.
"And he, going through the wood, will just have met the puffing devil. I
wish him the joy of the meeting!"